Before the world learned to move, it learned to endure.
There was a time when land had no name and the sky did not yet know where to rest. The ground trembled endlessly, pulled apart by unseen forces that tore at stone and fire alike. Energy roared without direction, tearing open rifts that swallowed matter as quickly as it formed. Nothing held. Nothing lasted.
From that chaos, compression occurred.
Not by intent, not by design, but by necessity.
Mass folded inward. Heat collapsed upon itself. Motion slowed, then bent, then ceased. At the center of that convergence, awareness emerged. It did not awaken suddenly. It accumulated. Thought layered upon instinct, instinct upon survival.
The dragon came into being.
It was not born as creatures later would understand birth. It assembled itself from what could not be allowed to escape. Vast, coiled, and dense beyond comprehension, its form absorbed excess energy simply by existing. Space adjusted around it. Time hesitated. Destruction lost momentum.
The dragon learned its first truth without words.
Movement caused instability.
When it shifted, the land fractured. When it breathed, storms formed. When it lifted its head, continents cracked under the strain of its presence. Existence reacted violently to even the smallest expression of its will.
So it learned restraint.
The dragon sank deeper, folding itself into the forming world. Its body anchored layers of stone and molten rock. Its heat stabilized the planet's core. Its immense mass quieted the fractures that once tore the surface apart. Where it rested, chaos dulled.
Stillness preserved balance.
As the ages passed, stone hardened. Seas formed. Skies settled into rhythm. The dragon slept, not out of fatigue, but because wakefulness threatened everything above it. Dreams leaked outward, shaping unseen currents that later generations would call magic. These currents followed the contours of its body, spiraling outward in vast invisible lines.
Life emerged unaware.
Creatures crawled. Forests grew. Rivers carved paths without knowing why the land no longer shattered beneath them. Above the dragon, the world learned continuity. Seasons followed one another. Death became a cycle instead of an ending.
The dragon did not watch them yet.
It remained deep, coiled within the planet, consciousness dimmed to a careful awareness. It sensed pressure changes, fluctuations in energy, disturbances that hinted at imbalance. When none came, it slept more deeply.
Above, mountains rose where its scales pressed closest to the surface. Valleys formed along the lines of its resting coils. A vast region became untouchable, not by decree, but by instinct. Creatures avoided it without understanding why.
The world stabilized because something beneath it refused to move.
And so the first age began, not with fire or war, but with silence.